Interesting the authors were medical doctors!
Those guys had knowledge whereas most of our medical doctors today are just really good at memorising algorithms after somehow skating by through organic chemistry and stats for beginners.
@rastinza @Andre @ringo I think that depends on the subject you're debating. A term I think is annoying is "settled science". Even I, who can't argue the finer points of the covid vaccines or climate change know that "settled science" is bs. When you say "97% of scientists say that climate change in man's fault" people tend to then take that as fact & call it "settled science" while silencing the scientists who disagree with how the info collected is interpreted.
@rastinza @Andre @ringo Some scientist, unemotionally I might add, have even called the models used to collect the information faulty.
I like how this little article defines "settled science".
https://www.ecowho.com/defn/s/settled+science/2bd77
@pamby1
Never heard anyone talk about settled science.
Probably that's a thing that happens just in the US.
This said, scientific consensus is important in the scientific development; otherwise there would be no way to determine what to do.
While scientific knowledge does change over time, scientific consensus identifies theories that are useful to solve problems at hand and that work well at explaining observations.
I'm no expert about climate change models and the information they're based on.
I trust the scientific community to have studied the case deeply and thoroughly after all these years, and if the consensus is so strong I see no reason to believe climate change wasn't caused by men.
It is true that there might be problems somewhere in the research, and that is why it's important that people are trying to find them.
If publication about errors in data collection did not change the current stand on climate change, then evidence of these errors is not strong enough or methodological errors in these articles were probably made.
Anybody can publish an article, just saying that some scientists disagree is no way to discredit a theory.
Surely these papers have been read by other researchers in the field, if a proof of methodological errors was found this would probably have led to a large number of publications about it (because everyone wants to prove that the others are wrong while he came out with a better idea), this, however, didn't happen.
For all we know, modifying human behaviour that alters the biosphere is the best way to limit climate change.
Maybe some better solutions will be found in the future, but this one appears to be quite well grounded and supported by people working on the topic every day.
@Andre @ringo
“Surely these papers have been read by other researchers in the field”
Have you heard of the replication crisis? How about the abysmal state of peer review? It’s not profitable to spend time reviewing peers’ work. New studies are where the money is.
One 2015 attempt to reproduce 100 psychology studies was able to replicate only 39 of them. A big international effort in 2018 to reproduce prominent studies found that 14 of the 28 replicated, and an attempt to replicate studies from top journals Nature and Science found that 13 of the 21 results looked at could be reproduced. … If scientists are pretty good at predicting whether a paper replicates, how can it be the case that they are as likely to cite a bad paper as a good one? Menard theorizes that many scientists don’t thoroughly check — or even read — papers once published, expecting that if they’re peer-reviewed, they’re fine. Bad papers are published by a peer-review process that is not adequate to catch them — and once they’re published, they are not penalized for being bad papers.
https://www.vox.com/future-perfect/21504366/science-replication-crisis-peer-review-statistics
@thatguyoverthere
The peer reviewing process currently has some big flaws.
This said, the peer reviewing process is just one step in the scientific knowledge development.
Reading a paper you first of all try to understand if it makes sense; that is: is the way they're describing their methodology appropriate?
If the methodology is not appropriate for the problem at hand, then you discard the article.
Then you use that knowledge, and that's the place where the consensus starts to grow.
If the things described in the paper work, you will keep using it and knowledge about it will spread, if it doesn't work then you will address the flaws.
Thus, even with a broken peer reviewing process, bad articles still get addressed (though a bit more down the line) and good ones get more accepted.
@Andre @pamby1 @ringo
I agree that peer review is not the only step, but the peer review process and the replication of results are both critical steps which have been lacking for quite some time. Here is a paper from 2005 on the issue (emphasis added):
https://journals.plos.org/plosmedicine/article?id=10.1371/journal.pmed.0020124
There is increasing concern that most current published research findings are false. The probability that a research claim is true may depend on study power and bias, the number of other studies on the same question, and, importantly, the ratio of true to no relationships among the relationships probed in each scientific field. In this framework, a research finding is less likely to be true when the studies conducted in a field are smaller; when effect sizes are smaller; when there is a greater number and lesser preselection of tested relationships; where there is greater flexibility in designs, definitions, outcomes, and analytical modes; when there is greater financial and other interest and prejudice; and when more teams are involved in a scientific field in chase of statistical significance. Simulations show that for most study designs and settings, it is more likely for a research claim to be false than true. Moreover, for many current scientific fields, claimed research findings may often be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias.
I think when it comes to climate change and whether or not it is man-made, the relationships between system components are intricate and hard to accurately model. This results in findings that may “be simply accurate measures of the prevailing bias”. Yes the planet is warming, but I think there are potential explanations that are not explored thoroughly enough by the prevailing scientific zeitgeist. I think the time scales we tend to focus on ignore the larger historical climate record because if we want to prove anthropogenic climate change, we are going to bias our focus on post industrialization climate changes. This year has been an interesting one in climate change news. Floods and droughts seem to be hitting pretty hard in some parts of the world which people point to as evidence that man-made climate change is real, but there is no through line as far as I can tell, and a single event that occurred earlier in the year could actually explain it at least some what. The Tonga volcano eruption which resulted in thousands of tons of water being ejected into the stratosphere. According to the NYT the amount of water vapor in the atmosphere increased by at least 5%.
Because it occurred about 500 feet underwater, the eruption of superheated molten rock also caused seawater to flash explosively into steam. A plume of water vapor, volcanic gases and ash reached an altitude of 35 miles. That increased the amount of water vapor in the stratosphere, which ends at an altitude of 31 miles, by at least 5 percent.
I think most people would agree the climate is changing. I think there is a vocal majority that seems convinced it is definitely caused by human behavior, but there is also a sizable minority of dissenters which are often discounted or discredited which has a stifling effect on others I’m sure. Here is an article from 2016 from Forbes saying the 97% number is not accurate and may be held to so tightly for marketing purposes.
In a 2007 book chapter, Oreskes infers that the lack of expressed dissent “demonstrates that any remaining professional dissent is now exceedingly minor.” The chapter revealed that there were about 235 papers in the 2004 article, or 25%, that endorsed the position. An additional 50% were interpreted to have implicitly endorsed, primarily on the basis that they discussed evaluation of impacts. Authors addressing impacts might believe that the Earth is warming without believing it is anthropogenic. In the article, Oreskes said some authors she counted “might believe that current climate change is natural.” It is impossible to tell from this analysis how many actually believed it. On that basis, I find that this study does not support the 97% number. … Given these results, it is clear that support among scientists for human-caused climate change is below 97%. Most studies including specialties other than climatologists find support in the range of 80% to 90%. The 97% consensus of scientists, when used without limitation to climate scientists, is false. .. Despite the difficulty in defining a precise number and the opinion that the exact number is not important, 97% continues to be widely publicized and defended. One might ask why 97% is important. Perhaps it’s because 97% has marketing value. It sounds precise and says that only 3% disagree. By implication, that small number who disagree must be out of the mainstream: cranks, chronic naysayers, or shills of the fossil fuel industry. They are frequently described as a “tiny minority.” It’s not as easy to discount dissenters if the number is 10 or 15 percent.
@thatguyoverthere
Hey, sorry if I didn't reply yet.
I hadn't had time to read your messages yet nor the articles you linked.
I hope I'll have time to read everything tomorrow and then I'll get back to you.
@Andre @pamby1 @ringo
